Tide New Ads Aimed At Men Could Endanger Household Laundry

Tide now marketing detergent directly to men

When men think tide, they think high and low, or maybe University of Alabama Crimson Tide, "Roll Tide." I think it is safe to say the last thing they think is laundry detergent.

Until, apparently now.

Because more and more men are participating in household drudgery, including doing the laundry, Tide is now marketing directly to males.

Their new line is called Tide Plus Febreze Sport "with victory fresh scent" and features a photo of New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on the front of the bottle.

There are, of course, two things wrong with this marketing approach:

First off, laundry detergent, unlike "Napalm in the morning," does not smell like victory. To men, laundry smells more like compromise.

Secondly, why would Tide opt for a quarterback to be the face of its product? I mean, tennis players get dirtier than quarterbacks.

According to a story in Consumer Reports, men are now spending a whopping 16 minutes a day on household drudgery, a share that has increased by a full two minutes over the past eight years. (And guys wonder where all their free time went.)

While women average 52 minutes of household work per day, this gap is not as large as it seems when you figure that in the past 50 years, men have gone from doing less than one-fifth of the chores to almost one-third now.

Although this distribution of drudgery shows no signs of abating, I think it would be prudent to exclude men from the laundry detail, mainly because men are not capable of undertaking this chore with even a modicum of competency.

It's not that men can't dump an armful of laundry into a tub, hit the hot water setting, and pour in some soap. It's that men will dump an armful of laundry into a tub, hit the hot water setting, and pour in some soap.

Men are not equipped to separate laundry, and the reason is because once they get beyond blond or red head, black and blue, they do not know colors.

Trust me on this: The more men are put in charge of the washing machine, the greater the number of families there will be walking around wearing clothing that has the scent of victory and the tint of 50 Shades of Gray.